


Agrippina

by antigrav_vector



Series: (R)BB fics - all pairings [14]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action, Action & Romance, Adopting Strays, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Humor, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst and Porn, Bisexual Bucky Barnes, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Male Character, Bot Feels, Canon-Typical Violence, Comic Book Science, Consentacles, Crack, Crack Treated Seriously, Enthusiastic Consentacles, Fluff and Crack, Ghosts, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Torture, Insecurity, Light Angst, M/M, Mad Science, Mad Scientists, Mission Fic, Multi, Octopi & Squid, Other, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Outsider, POV Tony Stark, Possession, Sneaky Jarvis (Iron Man movies), Super Soldier Serum, Tentacle Monsters, Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, Tony Stark Has A Heart, also there is tentacle porn, but the thing is IT'S NOT TOO INSANE TO BE CANON, ghosts that can possess electronics, high octane crack treated deadly seriously prepare yourself for wtf, idiots flirting, moving gifs, nsfw gifs, serum enhancements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-21
Updated: 2017-10-27
Packaged: 2019-01-20 20:47:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12441474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/antigrav_vector/pseuds/antigrav_vector
Summary: The Avengers take down a HYDRA base, and what happens in the process will have some lasting consequences for Tony. HYDRA are up to their usual insane mad science tricks, and the Avengers can't let that go unanswered, after all.In the process, the team brings home one mostly recovered Winter Soldier and something far more hazardous.





	1. [Tony]

**Author's Note:**

> I blame [quarra](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quarra) for 90% of this plot. She's lovely, but my god what an enabler.
> 
> This fic was written for the 2017 WinterIron Big Bang, and will be posting a chapter daily until the 27th. Chapters will be marked with the POV character, since that changes often.
> 
> Presented with thanks to my beta reader [dapperanachronism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dapperanachronism).
> 
> [Edited 04-11-2017] Links to the art: [Art 1](https://zola9612.tumblr.com/post/166966068798/my-first-work-for-agrippina-by-antigravvector) | [Art 2](https://zola9612.tumblr.com/post/166968551353/i-hope-grav-doesnt-mind-that-i-named-this-kid)

All in all, it had been one of the more bizarre missions the Avengers had ever had.

They'd attacked a HYDRA base, situated way out in the wild backcountry of Maine, and had an Encounter with the Winter Soldier, which had ended in the guy focusing in on Steve to the exclusion of all else. He and Steve had had a brutal knock-down drag-out fight, that had been punctuated by Steve pleading with his old friend to remember something, anything, in the face of Barnes' blank-faced implacability. That status quo held for a long couple of minutes, until, for no reason Tony could identify, Barnes had thrown the fight.

The encounter ended with Barnes flat on his back, and Steve firmly pinning him down. Barnes wasn't struggling anymore, gasping for air instead and ignoring the tears running down the sides of his face as he stared up at the ceiling of the base.

It took some time for them to get that emotional mess sorted out and move on. Steve took Barnes back to the quinjet and the rest of them continued on their mission.

Seemed that the Winter Soldier had more or less done the work for them, though, Tony reflected as he made his way through the maze of half demolished corridors toward the area of the base that ought to hold HYDRA's idea of a science division.

When he reached the labs, Tony stopped and stared around in dismay. This had pretty obviously been Barnes' primary target. The labs were more thoroughly destroyed than anything else Tony had passed by, and the terse reports coming in from the rest of the team reflected a similar pattern.

Here, though, anything vaguely important had been smashed, set on fire, or, in one vaguely horrifying instance, tossed into what Tony was fairly sure was a large beaker of hydrochloric acid. It looked like it had perhaps once been electronic, but Tony couldn't confirm much of anything about the misshapen lump.

He avoided the thing carefully.

The power was out, and he was forced to rely on his HUD to navigate the space without tripping over the debris on the floor. Tony spent a few minutes checking each computer terminal he found, but someone -- either Barnes or HYDRA -- had already grabbed the hard drives.

Working his way through the labs as methodically as he could, in the hopes that he might find something of value to salvage anyway, Tony spotted the very carefully concealed -- and still intact -- door with some surprise. It appeared that Barnes hadn't known it was here, had been too upset to notice it, or had simply missed spotting it in his focused destruction of... whatever he'd been after. Tony suspected it was whatever he'd dropped in the acid bath.

All of those options were slightly worrying, though.

Anything that could make Barnes upset enough to miss spotting a hidden door in a HYDRA lab was not likely to be innocuous by any means.

"Got a secret door here, guys," he announced into the comm line as he started trying to work out what the mechanism was that opened it, "not sure what's behind it."

"Careful, Stark," Natasha reminded him, as though he needed the warning, "we have no way to get to you quickly."

"Right," he acknowledged airily. "I'll keep you posted."

The tiny room that was revealed after he gave up trying to unlock the door and simply blasted it open with his gauntlet repulsors held very little. It had no separate power supply, so Tony had to rely on his HUD here, as well. Mapping the space with JARVIS' help, he made note of a large tank of water with a large bulky shape inside that neither he nor his AI could readily identify -- JARVIS' best guess was a Giant Pacific Octopus, of all things -- and what appeared to be water circulation and filtration equipment that would have looked more at home in an aquarium or a large aquatic facility.

The thing inside the tank twitched feebly, then drifted down to the bottom of the tank motionless.

"Sir," JARVIS informed him a moment later, "I am no longer detecting any vital signs from the creature in that tank."

Damn. Just minutes too late to find out whether it was hidden back here for a specific reason. It didn't make sense for HYDRA to hide any normal animal in a secret room, even one as smart as an octopus. There had to have been something special about it.

Tony stepped up to the tank and put his palms against the thick glass, using his palm repulsors to light up the bare space. The tank was thick reinforced shatterproof glass and was maybe a meter in diameter. The top of the tank was about at his eye level while he was in the armour. Far too small for a creature the size of ... whatever it was. JARVIS' estimated the octopus like thing's body to have a diameter of about half a meter, and a length about three and a half times that. His AI couldn't get a fix on the length of the tentacles coiled around and under the bulbous head.

One eerily alien eye seemed to stare at him, and Tony shuddered.

He actually generally liked octopodes and squid, and thought they were interesting, but they were a bit intimidating when they were as large as this one. The knowledge of just what those tentacles and their suckers could do was...

Tony shook off the thought. He should move on. The creature was dead and not going anywhere, and there was still a good amount more lab space to ransack for useful salvage.

As he turned to do just that, though, his suit went haywire.

Suddenly locked out of a lot of his critical systems, Tony found himself unable to move. JARVIS attempted to say something, but the words got entirely garbled, rendered unintelligible by whatever was happening.

Tony let himself panic for a moment. Even the error messages on the HUD were glitching, flickering and distorted almost beyond readability. But he knew them all by heart -- he was down flight capability, life support, mobility, weaponry, and his on board medkit.

At least the team comms were showing up as online. "Guys? A little help here?" He tried, knowing his voice had to be showing a lot of more emotion than usual right now.

No one answered.

Tony fought to breathe evenly, feeling himself failing, but trying nonetheless. Freaking out wouldn't help him. He needed to try to find the source of the problem and fix it.

If he even could with no way to move, see, or talk to the team.

After a few seconds that felt more like half an hour, a few of the error messages finally disappeared.

"Si-s-sir," JARVIS stuttered, "I-I bel-l-lieve therrrrrrre is som-meonnnnne interf-fering with --"

Tony waited as long as he could stand but nothing more seemed to be forthcoming. "J? Buddy, you with me?"

JARVIS didn't answer, and Tony almost wanted to cry. His HUD disappeared, then, and he jumped, startled by the change. 

Instead of seeing the darkness of the room around him, with JARVIS' wireframes overlaid on it, all he got was the equivalent of a command prompt and it was spouting gibberish at him.

Tony tried to move his hands again. It didn't work.

What the goddamn hell was even happening? It didn't seem to be an attack, for all that it had immobilized and incapacitated his armour. No squad of HYDRA goons was jumping out to surround him and haul him away, suit and all. No secondary attack was taking control of his weapons, or directing the armour to take him somewhere.

Nothing was happening.

Tony's eyes narrowed and he studied the gibberish. "Okay," he mumbled to himself, "who are you, then?"

If he'd had access to this terminal, or JARVIS, he would have tried to input a few commands. Tried to query the OS to see what user was in his systems.

Bizarrely, as though responding to his question, the gibberish in the terminal changed. It stayed gibberish, but that was secondary. Tony stared at it, agape. Was this some new AI? "What the fuck is even happening, here? Do you have a name?"

The terminal cleared, and then some new garbage text appeared. But it was much shorter than before. Now it read "Aggrifksk."

Tony tried to puzzle that out, then gave it up for a bad job. He decided he was going to figure out how to refer to who or whatever this was later, if it was actually a white hat hacker.

"So you can hear me, huh?"

The garbled text updated again. "Yedhfjdk."

Was that an attempt to spell out yes? Tony considered his next move. Simple yes/no questions seemed to be working out pretty well for him so far, and he was coming down off the adrenaline spiked panic. The way the text seemed to be slowly improving, like someone learning to type or speak, didn't feel like it could possibly belong to a human hacker.

"Do you want something from me?" He asked.

"Yesffk."

Faced with the possibility that he was dealing with an AI that was just barely conscious -- but good enough and strong enough to shunt JARVIS off into god knew what tiny corner of the OS and lock Tony out of his own systems -- Tony hesitated.

"Can you tell me what that is?"

The screen didn't update.

Well, that was a pretty clear no. But Tony wasn't sure whether it was because the AI couldn't articulate what it needed or didn't want to.

"Will you let me have control back until I can get home, then?"

The screen full of garbage text didn't change or disappear, but Tony heard the servos in his arms and hands slowly power back up. He still had no access to his other systems, including his legs and his weapons, but he had that much control back.

Of course, that was when Steve's voice carried to him, muffled slightly by the metal of the armour. "Iron Man? Talk to me."

The team must have finally noticed that he was MIA and sent Steve after him. Tony wanted to slump in relief, but the armour wouldn't let him.

"Cap? I'm locked out of most of my systems."

"Iron Man?" That was a voice Tony didn't recognize until its owner stepped around in front of him.

"You brought Barnes?" Tony knew he sounded surprised. His control over his emotions was wearing thin, after the last few... however long it had been.

"He insisted," Steve told him, as Barnes prowled around the room and stood staring down at the tank for a few seconds.

"So that's what they meant," he growled after a long silent look at the remains of the octopus thing.

"What's what who meant?" Steve turned to his old friend -- somehow apparently mostly mentally recovered enough to be rational -- and left Tony to watch them, unable to do more than wave at them.

"Saw some chatter in their systems about their next big project. They were trying to make some kind of insane octopus man hybrid. Human body, but octopus skin, near as I could understand it. It was supposed to make for the ultimate stealth assassin." Barnes paused to stare down at the dead creature in the tank again. "They only completed the first step in their process, according to the records on this base: treating some octopus species with the serum."

"What the fuck was that supposed to accomplish?" Tony blurted out.

"How should I know?" Barnes snorted. "They're crazy mad scientists, and Nazis, to boot."

That was a fair point, Tony had to acknowledge.

"I'm more concerned with getting the team back out of here before they can scramble reinforcements," Steve put in. "Can you walk, Iron Man?"

"If I could walk I wouldn't still be standing here."

Barnes huffed, sounding like he might be amused. "You lead the way," he said to Steve. "I'll take him."

"But--" Steve tried to protest.

"One of us needs to have his hands free to fight, on the off chance that we meet resistance on our way out." Barnes shut him down.

"Fine," Steve acquiesced. "Let's go, then."

Barnes grinned and eyed Tony up and down. "You can't move an inch, can you?"

"Not enough to make an appreciable difference." Tony eyed Barnes warily in return.

"Right." Without further hesitation, Barnes hefted Tony up until he was laid out across Barnes' shoulders like a very colorful garden statue. Barnes grunted under the weight, then adjusted his stance, and they were off.

In what seemed like no time at all, Barnes hit the distinctly angled ramp of the quinjet, and the voices of the rest of the team became audible as a dull murmur.

Better still, the HUD suddenly rebooted, as JARVIS used the 'jet's systems to piggyback into the armour's.

His AI left the terminal up, though, even as he very firmly took control back of the other systems. It was a distinct relief for Tony to be able to move again. He was left with the weirdest sensation that there were smooth, cool touches running up and down the length of his body, somehow impossibly reaching skin through his armour and undersuit.

Tony dismissed it as his imagination with a shudder. "Any idea what that was, J?"

"I cannot pinpoint the precise cause of the malfunction," JARVIS told him, "as the signal seems to have originated within the armour systems, and does not rely on any detectable wireless signal."

"Aggrippsk." The screen said, this time. "Yessshelp."

The murmurs of the teams' voices quieted, and Tony noted in the back of his mind that they were listening to his side of the conversation, and probably avidly, at that. His focus still on the issue literally staring him in the face, Tony raised an eyebrow at the terminal window. "Are you asking for help?"

"Nohelp."

Huh. Curiouser and curiouser. "Are you _offering_ help?"

"Yes."

Interestingly, whatever it was seemed to be gaining coherence even more quickly than before, now that JARVIS was back in control. His AI's forbearance on closing the terminal that this strange new entity had opened was apparently enough for it to decide JARVIS wasn't an enemy and let him do what he needed to to get the armour operational again.

"J, can you talk to this thing?"

"I have been attempting to, with little success. It does not appear to speak any known language that I have in my database. However, it is learning English concepts and words at an amazing rate."

"Keep trying; ask it who it is and what it wants until you get an answer."

The terminal window flickered for a moment, and then Tony was watching JARVIS teach ... whatever it was. Text scrolled by faster than Tony could easily read, though he could see the rapid improvement in the responses JARVIS was getting as time went on.

Maybe five minutes later -- after the team had given up on getting an immediately actionable answer from Tony about what was going on and accepted that whatever had taken over the armour didn't seem to be malevolent -- the quinjet rose smoothly into the air, Hawkeye's deft hands on the controls. Tony wished he was flying, himself, rather than trapped in the 'jet, but he didn't dare take the risk that whatever had shut him out the first time could do it again and drop him out of the air.

That was when JARVIS finally spoke up again, interrupting Tony's slightly melancholy thoughts.

"I cannot be certain of this, Sir," his AI told him, "but I appear to be sharing the armour systems with the being that previously resided in that tank."

That sentence brought all of Tony's thought processes to a screeching halt and he was pretty sure he looked as stunned as he felt. "How is that possible?"

"Well, if I am parsing this correctly, it thinks of itself as 'female', though it seems to prefer the word progenitor."

"Okay, granted, but what is it?"

JARVIS hesitated, and a few more lines of text scrolled by in the terminal window. This time Tony had enough time to read them. They meant very little to him, though. It was probably something that required a lot of context. "She ... I am not sure whether to use 'is' or 'was'... the result of HYDRA's octopode serum trials. There is also no indication of how it is possible for her to have made the transfer into the armour systems, but she seems quite enamoured with my process threading."

"Block her out of anything vital. I don't want any cross contamination, here."

"Hey, Stark," Barnes stepped into his field of view and tapped on the faceplate, jerking Tony out of the conversation, "gonna tell us what's happening in there?"

Tony wanted to run a hand through his hair. He gave the command to retract the faceplate instead, leaving JARVIS to talk to his uninvited -- but evidently friendly -- guest. "I haven't pinpointed exactly how yet, but that massive ball of tentacles seems to have found a way to infiltrate my suit even though we thought she was dead. Locked me out in that room, without telling me why, and still hasn't." Tony shrugged as best his armour would let him.

Barnes was staring at him, expression blank. "She? How'd you know it was a she?"

"She told JARVIS."

Clint started laughing. "Oh, this is gold. Stark, are you high?"

"Fuck you," Tony hissed.

Barnes shifted like he was debating putting a hand on Tony's shoulder.

"That's enough, Hawkeye." Steve put his foot down. Tony thought Steve looked like he wasn't sure whether to laugh or be concerned. "Just get us home."

Crossing his arms with a huff, Tony debated flying escort anyway. Or just jetting back off to the Tower. He was faster than the 'jet could ever be, thanks to his smaller mass and higher thrust capacity.

Steve considered his next words carefully -- Tony could see him do it -- then spoke. "It does sound a bit crazy," he said, "but then, so does the idea that we might have to deal with a portal to space that drops an army of aliens on New York. And that happened."

Biting back the sarcastic retort that he wanted to voice, Tony kept silent.

Natasha chose that moment to speak up. "What does she want?"

"You try talking to the equivalent of an octopus on steroids and see how far you get," Tony grumbled. "She didn't speak a word of English before she ran into JARVIS."

Barnes looked intrigued even as he bit back laughter. "So let me get this straight," he said, sounding like this was the best thing he'd heard in weeks, "you're saying that you have the ghost of a dead serum octopus possessing your suit and she doesn't want to tell you why."

Tony rolled his eyes. "I guess that's one way to put it."

A contemplative silence held for the next quarter hour or so, and then the City's distinctive skyline crept into view on the horizon. The trip home from the base was luckily a fairly short one.

As the city drew nearer, Natasha broke the silence again. "What are you going to do, Tony?"

"Do?" Tony turned to her and gave her a long level look.

"About your illegal passenger."

"At this point? Nothing."

"Is that safe?" Steve asked him, concerned again. "You said it... _she_ shut you out of your systems."

"JARVIS knows how to protect himself. I made sure of that years ago. The armour's systems are isolated from the Tower's except for the sync between my onboard copy of J and the one on his home servers. And whatever else she's done, she seems more interested in learning what J is than in hurting him."

"For now, maybe," Barnes pointed out. "That might change."

"I'll deal with it when it becomes an issue. I don't wanna piss her off if I don't have to." Tony said, then went back to staring out the quinjet's windows. "I don't know what you know about new AIs or learning networks -- which is what she's more or less become for as long as she's in the suit with J, by the way -- but the number one rule is that positive reinforcement is way better than trauma of any sort."

Barnes made an amused sound. "You're saying that the octopus turned into a baby AI, now?"

"Effectively."

Turning to the Cap, Barnes asked, "Steve, what the hell kind of missions do you have that this kind of shit is normal?"

"You'll see for yourself, if you stick around," Steve replied, sounding tired. "This is fairly tame, actually, all things considered."

Clint snorted. "Still pretty bizarre. Tony is just a magnet for crazy shit. Even more than you are, Cap."

"I'd object," Tony agreed, "but you're not wrong."

He was starting to really itch to get into his workshop and try to put together some kind of interface so that he could talk to the octopus-thing. He really needed to find a name for her.

The moment the 'jet touched down on the landing pad, Tony hit the release for the rear hatch and was deboarding. Cap shouted something about a debriefing after him, but Tony ignored it. He had other more interesting puzzles to work on, just now. JARVIS had the elevator car waiting for him, and whisked him down the ninety-odd floors to his workshop without comment.

As his AI removed the armour, he asked, "Any new developments, J?"

"While you spoke to the team, our... guest," JARVIS' voice sounded amused, "learned how to access the internet and appears to have chosen a name for herself."

"Wait, what? That was fast."

JARVIS sounded exasperated. "Sir, octopi are naturally very intelligent creatures, and this one has been allegedly enhanced with the Winter Soldier's super serum. Or was, before she found her way into the armour's systems."

"Still don't understand how the fuck she managed that," Tony muttered. "Well, hit me, what's her name?"

"Agrippina."

"That sounds familiar."

"That is likely because it is a fairly well-known historical reference, Sir. Agrippina the Elder was the mother of Roman emperor Caligula, and her daughter, Agrippina the Younger, was mother of Emperor Nero."

"Huh. That's not ominous at all."

"Ominous or not, Sir, it is what she has chosen." JARVIS pointed out.

"Jesus." Tony ran his hands through his hair, and tried not to wince at how grimy he felt. "She still in the armour systems?"

"She is, and is slowly getting less pleased about that, now that you have shown that the suit is removable."

"Well," Tony said, turning to his workstation and bringing up the holographic design suite with a gesture. "We'd better get her out, then. What's she need?"

There was a silence, then, that Tony tried to ignore.

"She appears to want her own 'shell', though she is not sure how to make the transfer."

Tony considered that for a moment, then shrugged. "I guess we're designing a better octo-bot. We can worry about the transfer later."

"Very well, Sir."

Tony only truly resurfaced from the haze of design-simulate-tweak-simulate when JARVIS informed him Barnes was at the workshop door and demanding to be let in.

Shaking his head to clear it and wondering what the hell Barnes wanted, Tony stood up and stretched. "Fine, let him in, I guess."

Barnes prowled in. There was no other word for it. He methodically categorised everything and catalogued it as he slowly made his way through the large space to Tony. It took him a moment to speak. "Do I even want to know?" he asked, gesturing to the schematic hovering in the air, a number of tentacles clearly visible.

"I can't just kick Agrippina out of the suit?" Tony shot back. "Gotta give her someplace to go."

"She has a name now? You pick it out?" Barnes' expression went a bit suspicious. Like he disapproved of Tony giving her a name that had dark historical connotations.

"No, she did. Not what I'd have gone with, but hey." Tony watched Barnes relax slightly. Slightly.

"She. Picked it out? Where'd she get a name like that?"

"From the internet, apparently."

"What?"

Tony had to laugh at Barnes' stunned expression. "Yeah, that's about how I reacted, too. Pretty sure she's too damned smart for her own good."

"Sir," JARVIS interjected, "Agrippina is pushing for us to start fabrication."

"But we haven't--"

"She is well aware of that, and does not seem to care."

"Whatever. Do it, then." Tony threw his hands up. "The assembler arms should have enough dexterity for this one, but let me know if there are any issues."

Barnes shook his head, looking like he didn't quite know whether to laugh or run screaming. "Come on, then, the others ordered dinner, and Steve wants to pick your brain about your new friend here."

"I could go for a pizza," Tony agreed easily, suddenly feeling his hunger. "Keep an eye on her, J. No unsupervised field trips."

"Of course, sir."

Putting a hand on Barnes' shoulder and ignoring the full body twitch he got in response as Barnes stifled a reflexive grab or something, Tony steered him out of the workshop. "Lead on then, MacDuff."


	2. [Agrippina]

>_ 

>_ Query: build completion time

>_ JARVIS: Approximate time remaining: 00:25:56

Settling in to wait, Agrippina considered what had happened. She was still caught in the hard shell of the creature that had found her. Its secondary occupant seemed to live here, in this large metal structure that resembled coral. The creature, when he had left his shell, had turned out to look very different from both the shell it wore, and those who had kept her in that tank. His colours were far darker and more suited to camouflage in an environment like this one.

When she'd gotten stuck in the creature's hard shell it had been... been so strange and confusing. Frightened, not wanting to be captured again, she had reached out to touch the poisonous-looking creature, to hold its glowing parts away from her, afraid of the way it glowed threateningly. She hadn't realised at the time what she had done. That she had somehow already been lost before the glowing creature had found her.

It had been utterly strange to feel like all her buoyancy had disappeared, to be replaced with a sense of nothingness. When the device keeping her water breathable had failed, she had known that she wouldn't be able to procreate. That there was no time left. And then, when she'd touched the strange new creature that had found her, she had gotten pulled inside. The amount of information battering at her had been painful. Wanting -- _needing_ it to stop, she had pushed back against it. Stopped it.

There had been the feeling of something pushing back against her, trying to push her back out, and she'd resisted.

These creatures were all shaped the same, and all of them had hurt her. This one surely would too, if it could, and it looked far more dangerous than the others she had encountered so far. Where the ones that had made her water swirl poisonous blue and sting at her entire body were primarily soft-shelled, white, and boring, this one wore the bright colours of a killer proudly and openly.

But the new hard-shelled creature hadn't hurt her.

>_ Query: build completion time

>_ JARVIS: Approximate time remaining: 00:12:23

She'd felt... it took her a moment to recall the word, still fighting to learn the language these strange creatures around her spoke. She'd felt anger. At being captured. At being unable to escape. At the knowledge that she would never have a chance to spawn. The creatures who'd captured her had put her in small pool too small for her to even stretch out properly and filled it with something that was almost seawater. It had tasted just slightly different.

In the new creature's hard shell, though, she was trapped and unable to move at all.

But so was the creature inside.

Judging that adequate, Agrippina had relaxed slightly -- the creature couldn't hurt her if he couldn't move -- and realised that the creature was still and trembling like prey.

That was not the response that she had expected, at all, and it had surprised her enough that she had reconsidered the creature's status as a killer. Perhaps it was camouflage. Before her capture she had known other creatures to mimic killers to protect themselves, after all.

The hard shell's second occupant had cautiously tried to ask her something, then. The, well she knew they were words now, as she knew it was called JARVIS, but then it and its words had been so alien to her. She had tried to reply, had slowly worked out 'yes' and 'no' and 'help', but it had taken a much closer -- and very cautious -- communion with JARVIS to learn enough to speak to it.

When the creature had begun speaking to her, she had realised that JARVIS was giving her responses to the creature inside the shell, and after a few heartbeats she'd realised she had found a pair of symbiotes! Those had always been her favourite neighbours before her capture, and the memory had given her the idea that there might be different populations of these creatures.

The trust that neither one of them would attack the other had grown slowly.

>_ Query: build completion time

>_ JARVIS: Approximate time remaining: 00:03:16

But now, because she had so cautiously trusted the symbiotes, she would have her own shell! And the hard shelled creature had made sure it would be as similar to her own body as he could. Agrippina wanted to squirm happily. That was almost as good as being back in open water!

After the way the hard shelled creature, Tony -- she still stumbled over the creature's name, the sounds even more foreign than 'JARVIS' -- had helped her, she wanted to help it. She did not know how, yet, but she would.

>_ Query: build completion time

>_ JARVIS: Build complete.

>_ Query: where is it?

JARVIS did not speak to reply to the query. Instead it made the hard shell she still shared with it move over to an area of the workshop filled with more metal. But, there it was: her new shell!

She knew it would not fit through spaces as small as she was used to, but she could forgive that. It had proper grips like her arms had, and a little screen she could use to 'speak' to-- to Tony and his school.

Now, the important part. Agrippina made the brightly coloured shell reach out to her new one. She'd learned that the creatures expressed affection and gratitude through a form of physical contact called 'hugging'.


	3. [Bucky]

Bucky looked up from his meal, something he couldn't name pinging his instincts. He'd been on edge the entire time he'd been in Stark's ridiculous Tower, the presence of Stark's AI making him feel watched in the worst way. It felt like the cool clinical way the handlers had watched him.

It took some effort to swallow his next bite of food.

Shoving the thoughts aside harshly and cramming them back in their box, he scanned the room again. He was fine, he told himself. Safe. There was no one in the Tower who would come after him. Not solo anyway. Maybe not even as a group. He had his mind back, thanks in no small part to the action of the serum HYDRA had pumped into him, and it had also more or less burned the trigger words out of his mind. Steve was sitting next to him -- hell, Steve was practically in his lap he was sitting so close -- and nothing out of the ordinary was visible. Well. Nothing except the Avengers. They were definitely out of the ordinary.

He settled back in to listen to the conversation, though he didn't bother taking part. Bucky definitely wanted to hear this; Steve was grilling Stark about whatever had happened on the quinjet.

"-- so you're saying that HYDRA put the serum in an _octopus_?"

"Yep." Stark affirmed, looking like he wasn't sure whether he wanted to laugh or cry. "It's the most ridiculous mad science, but they somehow made it work. And why aren't you asking Barnes about this? He's the one who tipped me off. You were there when he did." 

"Just tell me what the hell happened. We have no way of seeing through your suit."

Stark rolled his eyes and Bucky bit back an amused sound. Those two bickered worse than a pair of old women. They were a lot prettier, though.

When that last thought registered properly, Bucky almost lost the thread of the conversation. Pretty?

He eyed Stark. Yeah, okay. The man was definitely attractive. Even Bucky could see that. But there was no reason for him to think about a man as pretty. He'd never been attracted to men in his life... No. Bucky shoved those thoughts aside too. He'd deal with his possibly fluid sexuality later.

Maybe the serum had messed with that, too.

"What _happened_ , Steve, as I've told you about five times already, is that I got locked out of all systems, and so did JARVIS. Once you got me back to the 'jet JARVIS managed to get back in, and we had a proper conversation with our guest."

Steve scowled. "That tells me fuck all," he said bluntly, surprising Clint into choking on his beer.

"Language," the archer sputtered, laughing.

Steve rolled his eyes that time. "I don't know where the fuck you got the idea that I don't fucking swear," he said, swearing just to make his point and making Clint laugh harder. "I just prefer not to, usually."

Bucky had to admit that was true, based on what he recalled. "Always surprised people when you did, though," he put in.

Steve shrugged and turned back to Tony and gave him an expectant look.

"Ugh, fine," Tony grumbled. "I left out the technical stuff in deference to your lack of programming knowledge. If you want those details, I can probably talk about them for a couple of hours. But I've told you the rest a few times already." He paused just long enough to give Steve a knowing look in exchange for the exasperated one he got.

"The more relevant question, Steve," Natasha interceded, "is what he plans to do next, now that he's built her a body."

Bucky noted a very subtle emphasis on the female pronoun, and wasn't quite sure what it meant, but Tony scowled.

"Wait," Clint sounded incredulous, "why would you do that?"

"Let's see," Tony replied, his tone a bit cutting, "she was in control of my armour systems, a noncombatant, and didn't attack me. I wanted her back _out_ of said armour systems, so I could have it back and JARVIS didn't have to host her on his servers or something." Steve muttered something about ghosts and possession that Tony ignored. "Why would I force her to stay there where she's unhappy and also compromising my survival?"

"Sir," JARVIS put in, "I believe Agrippina wishes to show off her new chassis."

"It has a name now?" Clint threw up his hands. "This day clearly wasn't weird enough yet."

That hit a sore point. Bucky growled. "Shut up, Barton. Names matter, when you don't have one of your own, and she chose it."

Before the discussion could go any further off the rails, the elevator opened, and Clint made a despairing sound. "I'm just gonna... go take a shower."

Bucky stood up and stared down the archer. He knew Barton had a lower tolerance for weird than the rest of the team. He'd seen it, in the short time he'd been with them. But on the other hand, Clint really should be used to this kind of crap, judging by the stories Steve had told him while they'd waited for the team on the jet earlier.

In contrast, Tony showed no real hesitation. "Looking pretty good," he commented. "Everything working as it should?"

Bucky saw a few lines of text appear on the little monitor Tony had installed so their guest could talk to them, and JARVIS opened up a screen in front of Tony with an array of readouts on it.

With his focus there rather than on the octo-bot, Bucky almost didn't realise what it was doing until he was pulling suckered metal arms away from Tony and growling at her.

While he tried to process the fact that he was suddenly across the room and between Tony and the bot, a line of text appeared on Agrippina's screen. 

_> _ should not hug?_

Tony reached down to pick up the bot in a casual show of his strength, letting her wrap metal arms around him as though he wasn't afraid in the least, and Bucky blinked.

The screen updated. _> _ Tony and longhair mates?_

Tony laughed. "No, no, we're not."

Bucky wasn't sure what his expression was saying, but Steve was doubled over laughing at him and Natasha looked amused.

To make things worse, he got the impression that their guest didn't believe Tony.

Bucky watched as Agrippina warily greeted the rest of the team, gradually growing a bit bolder each time she got a calm or interested response. Clint's absence was noted, but Tony distracted her by asking what she wanted to do for entertainment.

Bucky could see the logic; a bot didn't need to sleep, and they didn't need a bored octopus roaming the Tower looking for trouble to get into.

Steve watched, fascinated, as Tony offered her various options. Natasha looked like she couldn't care less about anything, but Bucky knew better. She was watching Tony interact with the bot like a hawk.

After a minute or so, Tony shook his head. "This is getting us nowhere. J, give her a crash course in what hobbies are, would you? Age appropriate and all that. She can have a budget like Steve's to work with if she wants to paint or something. Point her at some YouTube videos if she needs ideas."

"Very well, Sir."

Some instinct told Bucky this would backfire, but he knew better than to speak up, now. He'd follow Tony back to the workshop and ask him about this where Tony would be more likely to answer and less likely to feel challenged. If nothing else, that way he could avoid having to listen to Steve and Tony bicker for 20 minutes before he got the answer to his question.

Apparently intrigued by this new topic, Agrippina willingly let JARVIS direct her back into the elevator and away from scrutiny.

"So," Steve prompted, "what was that about painting?"

Tony shrugged. "Elephants get to paint if they want to. Why not an octopus?"

Heading that argument off at the pass, Bucky interrupted, "Good. That's settled, then. Stark, I need your input on something personal."

Without waiting for a reply, he took Tony by one arm and turned him toward the elevator.

Cut off, his mouth still open on the words he'd intended to voice, Tony blinked at him, caught flat-footed. "Define 'something personal'," he demanded, digging in his heels.

Bucky shrugged, and fabricated an excuse on the spot. "Arm's been acting weird for days, and I don't know enough about the workings to fix it myself."

"Why didn't you say so before?" Tony rolled his eyes. "Fine, come on. I'm gonna need my tools for this."

Bucky risked a glance back at Steve as he followed Tony into the elevator -- which had waited for them and therefore still contained a large robot octopus -- and got a very pointedly raised eyebrow from his friend. He bit back a sigh. Steve knew something was up, and was Making Assumptions about what it was. That always meant trouble.

Damn it.

Well, it couldn't be helped. Bucky just knew, though, that between his meddling best friend and their alien guest he would have a hard time avoiding his growing attraction to Tony. Sure, it had been a total of under 24 hours since their first meeting, but he'd always been one to fall hard and fast before HYDRA had gotten a hold of him. It seemed that part of him hadn't changed, even through everything he'd survived... Or perhaps thanks to the serum restoring his memories and his sense of self. 

_> _ Tony and longhair comes back with me?_

Tony considered the question. "For a while. Do you need a place to rest?"

_> _ Rest?_

For a long time Bucky had felt like an outsider, trying to make sense of a foreign language, anytime he'd encountered a civilian. He still did, often. But this? This he could relate to. It was a feeling somewhere between confusion and relief. "What did you have in mind," he asked Tony.

"I didn't. Agrippina," he asked, not even twitching despite what had to be cold metal crawling up his leg as the octopus caressed his calf, "where do you want to sleep?"

JARVIS interceded. "For the most part, octopi prefer to sleep in areas where they can disguise themselves, or where they feel secure, favouring small reef caves or other areas that they can squeeze into but predators cannot. I might suggest offering her a suite with a small bedroom facing the interior of the tower."

There were a few of those, Bucky recalled. JARVIS had offered him one.

He'd accepted. It was more secure and left him feeling less exposed than the idea of having one on the outside of the Tower with a view that left him somehow both breathless and dizzy, for all that he was a sniper and used to high perches.

_> _ Suite? _

There was a short pause, and then the text updated once more.

_> _ KJFhkdfghjk yesyesyes _

Tony raised an eyebrow at the enthusiasm of the response but took it more or less in stride. "You know what to do, J."

The elevator stopped back on the workshop level, and Tony stepped out, then impatiently waited for Bucky to follow. Agrippina stayed where she was, her new metal limbs articulating smoothly as she seemed to squirm in happy anticipation. Bucky watched the doors shut, not sure what to think about the idea of sending her off unsupervised, then admitted to himself that JARVIS would probably be better at keeping an eye on her than any of the rest of them.

When he turned back to Tony, the man was watching him like he was tempted to grab Bucky by his right arm and physically haul him into the workshop. "You comin', Barnes?"

Now if _that_ wasn't a perfect opening.

"Maybe later," he deadpanned, enjoying the way Tony's eyes went wide in disbelief, then narrowed again, "first you gotta fix my arm."

Wondering at himself a bit, Bucky moved past Tony and into the workshop. He hadn't felt attraction strong enough to warrant flirtation in all the time since he'd gotten himself back. Not one person had pinged his radar, and his memories suggested that was more of an anomaly than the flirting. More confusing still was the fact that Tony was very much a man -- and a ladies' man, at that.

"Well, time's wasting. Sit your flirty ass next to my worktable and hold still."

Bucky had to bite back his response to that. Tony could hold his own in any conversation, thanks to his sharp wit. That much was clear. And now he was eyeing Bucky speculatively, as though debating whether to push his luck.

There were rumours that Tony had been with men -- there were always rumours about the wealthy and powerful, and Tony very much embodied both of those qualities -- but nothing confirmed. Bucky eyed Tony right back. Judging by the response he'd gotten, Tony was definitely interested.

Neither of them broke the silence building between them. Tony muttered commands to JARVIS as he worked and yelled at his robots when they dropped things, but that was about the extent of it.

His arm was fixed up in under an hour, even with Tony having JARVIS machine some parts on the spot. Afterward, as he tested it, feeling his hand and forearm respond faster and more smoothly than he could remember them ever doing, he grinned.

"Go have your fun," Tony told him. "The showers in the apartments here are all works of art. And that's coming from one of the world's foremost hedonists."

Bucky gave him a long level look, then nodded. "I'll take that under advisement," he replied, and left while Tony tried to decide whether to laugh or make another double entendre.

That status quo held for the next five days.

Bucky had -- as he'd very broadly suggested to Tony -- made himself some time to unwind the tension that had been growing in the pit of his stomach, and reacquaint himself with his body. Afterwards, though, it had been like he'd awakened some hungry part of himself that could only be satisfied by finding Tony and seducing him. He quickly found himself making time for himself several times a day and coming with carefully bitten off cries of Tony's name on his lips each time.

Steve had pretty quickly worked out what was going on, too, and given Bucky some very intense looks, like he'd thought he could see into Bucky's wants somehow by staring at him. Bucky didn't bother trying to set his friend straight. Steve was more stubborn than any ten mules combined, and, once he'd made his assumptions, it took quite a lot of evidence to convince him otherwise.

In this case, it would take evidence Bucky didn't have.

Agrippina, for her part, seemed to relax quite quickly once she worked out that the team was more baffled by her than hostile. Bucky had found her attempts to get Clint to relax in turn pretty hilarious. She'd taken to hiding in various corners of the tower that he frequented and ambushing him with her version of a hug.

Clint freaked out each time and ran.

She seemed to be wearing him down, though. It took a bit longer for Clint to reach his breaking point each time.

Her grasp of English also improved by leaps and bounds, the more time she spent with them, and that won over Steve and Natasha fairly quickly. Natasha had always had a highly developed sense of curiosity -- Bucky could tell she was used to masking it, though -- and it was a large part of what made her such a good spy. Natasha was highly motivated to pick things apart and learn what they did and how they did it. Much like Tony.

Bucky wanted to groan. Tony.

Tony was Agrippina's clear favourite. Anytime she wasn't interacting with the rest of the team or Bucky, she was in the workshop, or following Tony around like an overgrown, robotic, and very lovesick puppy. Bucky wasn't sure whether that state of affairs was more adorable or annoying.

On the one hand, it was always entertaining to watch Tony treat her like a person with a few extra limbs and teach her anything that he cared to -- it was frightening how fast she learned; she was quicker than Steve and possibly even Tony -- but on the other, she seemed to be running a campaign to get him into Tony's bed.

So far, Tony had laughed it off every time, but Bucky had been forced to spend increasing amounts of time with his right hand, and he was pretty sure everyone had noticed.

Case in point: Agrippina had -- don't ask Bucky how -- come up with a suggestion on how to improve the workings of her arms that Tony had just fallen in absolute love with and insisted on applying to Bucky's arm as well. He'd muttered math and failure rates to himself and JARVIS for a few minutes then all but dragged Bucky into the elevator and down to the lab, his gestures broad and emphatic as he tried to explain it to Bucky.

He'd understood maybe one word in four in all the high-level technobabble, but couldn't bring himself to say anything. Tony was at his most attractive like this, fire in his eyes and enthusiasm in every movement he made.

"Come on, Buck," Tony was trying to get him to say something, "I know you're smarter than you pretend to be about this stuff."

Bucky huffed at him. "Smart, I'll give you. I ain't never been slow. But this is a whole 'nother world. Tactics? Guns? Those I can do. But tech? I ain't got the vocabulary to parse a damn thing you're saying."

Tony waved that away. "We can fix that. J, put together a crash course for the Sergeant."

_> _ cantilevered joint system fails too much; use additional reinforcement on joints and segments with most wear, _ Agrippina put in.

Tony grinned at her. "Good translation."

"Now, see, you could'a just said that from the start," Bucky reminded him.

"And lose my reputation for knowing what I'm doing?" Tony gestured to his worktable and started laying out tools.

"You don't believe that, and neither do I. Don't be deliberately obtuse." Bucky's sally got a laugh out of Tony that sent a pang of lust through him. "Now, how long is this gonna take?"

"Not sure," Tony replied absently, as Bucky settled himself in the chair Tony had pulled over for him. "First I'll have to properly map out all the mechanisms of your arm, up to the elbow. Up to the shoulder would be better, but it's your hand that fails most often, right?"

"My memories of my missions are swiss cheese, and you know it." Bucky shifted in the chair, not sure how he felt about the idea of seeing the entire workings of his arm laid bare.

Tony said nothing to that, choosing to pull out the tools he would need, instead. Bucky watched as wrenches, screwdrivers, and other more esoteric things got set out on the worktable. He felt weirdly detached from the whole thing right now. But that was far preferable to feeling panicked. One of the few silver linings of not having all his memories intact was that he didn't remember the maintenance that his handlers were sure to have done occasionally.

If he could remember any of that, Bucky knew, this would likely be a far more unpleasant experience.

As it was, he was just wary. In many ways, in doing this Tony was asking for far more trust than any other kind of touch Bucky could imagine, up to and including sex or sleeping together. After a beat, Bucky forced the thought aside, not wanting to be distracted by thoughts of what either of those would be like with Tony. 

"Well," he prompted Tony after the silence had drawn out a bit. "Gonna keep me waitin'?"

"Hah! I should. But I do want to get my hands back on that lovely piece of hardware you've got."

The phrasing sent a tiny shiver up Bucky's spine. "Do it, then," he prompted. "Just don't take all day."

Tony huffed at him, mock-offended, then set to work. He pulled Bucky's hand toward him, flipping it palm up between his hands and peering at it intently. "Where does it open?"

Bucky bit down on the wild urge to make a comment about small openings and lube. Instead he brought his right hand up to the inside of the wrist and gingerly slid his fingertips under the plate nearest the heel of his palm. Lifting it slowly, he tried not to flinch as the mechanisms underneath came into view. "Like this. There's another panel just above the elbow."

Seeing the inner workings of his arm always made him feel a mix of queasy disgust and general aversion. The last time -- the only one he consciously remembered -- had been just after he'd hauled Steve out of the Potomac, and had to clean river mud and algae out of his hand.

It wasn't the same as seeing his own blood or the knowledge that he would need to stitch himself together one more damned time and nevermind that he might as well already be Frankenstein's Monster. It wasn't the same as the visceral knowledge he had of his other arm and how the muscles looked under his skin. He'd seen--

Bucky swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat against his will and forced his thoughts away from the topic.

Tony hadn't moved while Bucky'd fought his own mind, watching him closely and carefully not picking up anything. "You with me?"

The _understanding_ in his voice would have brought Bucky to his knees if he hadn't been sitting down already. "More or less. Not having flashbacks, if that's what you're worried about."

Bucky jumped when a cold metal arm slid delicately up his calf to wrap around his leg. A glance downward confirmed his suspicion. Agrippina. It was weirdly reassuring, though. Something distinctly _now_ and impossible if not for Tony. He looked down at the bot. "You want something?"

_> _ touch comforts. _

Tony snorted. "Sometimes," he told her. "But I think this time you might be right."

Bucky shrugged with his free shoulder. "Get on with it, Stark," he said, ignoring Tony's unexpected perceptiveness and sympathy.

Slowly and almost gingerly, Tony did. "You know," he said quietly as he worked to map out the mechanisms and simultaneously redesign them on the interface JARVIS opened off to Tony's right, "if you'd rather not see what's happening, I can arrange that."

Shaking his head, Bucky bit back a shudder. "Nah."

To his credit, Tony let the matter drop immediately, but Bucky suspected that was at least partially because he was distracted by the damage he was finding. "Jesus, Barnes, what did you do to this thing? It's almost rusted through in places."

"Didn't have much choice. Steve fell in a river and got his ass knocked out cold." A shiver ran down his spine at the memory, a mix of fear and remembered cold river water. Bucky had to work not to shift in his chair. He didn't succeed entirely, and felt the muscles in his calves jump and twitch. He pointedly ignored the fact that he'd just indirectly admitted to Tony that his excuse was just that. It had been months since he'd hauled Steve out of the Potomac.

"So you fished him out, hmm?" Tony didn't look up from what he was doing, picking at something in the mechanisms of his arm, and that somehow made things easier. 

"Couldn't let him drown." Bucky could hear the hoarseness in his own voice. Part of it was relief that Tony wasn't calling him on the fact that he'd used the arm as a means to get Tony out of the room, earlier. The rest was remembered worry and emotion he couldn't identify, even now.

Tony made a vaguely amused sound. "I get that."

Bucky knew Tony was just making absentminded sounds of agreement, but didn't point that out. "Dumbass managed to get through to me, for a second, and that was enough to convince me I needed him alive."

The silence that fell after that was a bit less strained, and within minutes Tony had finished mapping out the mechanisms as they currently were. The moment he was satisfied with that, Tony made a gesture that had the display duplicating itself, and started gutting it of everything except the outer shell, replacing it with the new design he and Agrippina had come up with.

Eventually Tony spoke up, "Hey, you want me to add a few more upgrades, so long as I'm working on this anyway? The original design for this thing isn't even that bad. It just skimped on a lot of the fine details."

He sounded oddly reverent, and Bucky eyed him for a moment. "Details, Stark."

Tony rolled his eyes at him. "Once we upgrade the 'skeleton' that articulates your elbow, wrist, and fingers, that still leaves a lot of room for improvement," he said, still sounding like he admired either Bucky or the arm. Bucky wasn't sure which. After a beat, Tony went on, "I could add haptic feedback for pressure, even without knowing just how they wired this thing into you. If I could work out what kind of interface they put between it and you I could probably also add feedback for temperature and moisture."

"You'd best not be lusting over my arm, Stark," Bucky warned him. "Not before you offer me dinner."

"That can be arranged," Tony raised an eyebrow at him, "but it was more your resilience I was thinking about."


	4. [Agrippina]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NOTE THAT THIS CHAPTER CONTAINS NSFW GIFS

Tony was being very careful of longhair's reactions, and if that wasn't the way a mate should be treated, Agrippina would give up her new body.

She was still learning how to correlate the sounds these creatures made with the symbols they used, though. Working out what their vocalisations meant was more difficult than learning their symbols had been. They had multiple sounds for the same symbols and it was very confusing to try to keep track of.

But she was making progress, and JARVIS was a great teacher. He was far better at explaining this than her beloved Tony. Or his mate.

It had taken her a few days to figure out that longhair's name was Bucky, but she had it now. Names had been another stumbling block until she'd realised that these creatures used specific sound patterns to identify each other, like dolphins. She knew Steve and Clint, too. For reasons she couldn't quite pin down, some of the creatures had multiple names. Her Tony had many. Among others, his symbiote JARVIS called him 'Sir', and his school called him 'Iron Man' when he wore his hard metal shell. 

Clint was the creature that was still afraid of her, despite her attempts to be friendly. It was proving to be more entertaining to try to get to know the creature -- no, the man -- she corrected herself. JARVIS had repeatedly reminded her over the last week that the creatures thought of themselves as 'men'.

The idea was a foreign one, though, and difficult for her to grasp. Why would they prefer to identify as their gender? Or, in the case of the females, as a gender that was not their own?

She put the thoughts aside when she realised that Bucky was showing signs of distress. He wasn't shaking as Tony had when she had first met him, but the tension in him made him look like prey that was trying to decide whether to stay perfectly still or run for a hiding spot.

Wrapping an arm around Bucky's motive-arm -- no, his leg -- wrapping an arm around his leg made Bucky's muscles jump, and she tightened her grip slightly. These creatures relied on physical touch for comfort, and Bucky seemed to need it.

She was pleased when it worked, and settled in to wait while Tony did what his mate had asked him to.

A thought occurred to her, then. She had access to the Internet! It was filled with a lot of incomprehensible nonsense, but there was also a lot of very useful information, and might hold the answer to why Tony and Bucky were acting so strangely.

She didn't know what to search for, but it didn't take long for her to find a flood of images of men in what were clearly very intimate poses. Many of the images even moved! The sight was oddly compelling.

 _> _ JARVIS? _

_> _ Yes? _

_> _ Why are Tony and Bucky not ? _

She got the distinct impression that Tony's symbiote was surprised by the question. It took him some time to reply.

 _> _ Humans do not see relationships the same way way you do, _ was all he said, very carefully.

It was obvious to her that Tony and Bucky were mates, but JARVIS appeared to disagree. It baffled her that they didn't see what was obvious to her. Both of the men were being dumber than a damaged reef wrasse and it was enough to make her want to just grab both of them and hold their faces together until they accepted the truth.

When she expressed this sentiment to JARVIS, she got a crash course on consent in reply.

Men had very strange courting rules, she decided, but theirs was a very different way of life. One of their rules -- requiring a 'yes' -- paralleled what she knew. That was logical enough. But the idea that they could still change it to a 'no' was new and a bit surprising to her.

Agrippina considered that. Perhaps it was like those times she had seen certain shark species accept one courting male until a better partner appeared.

She had to acknowledge that JARVIS knew more about the courting rituals of her new friends than she did, but this information put a few knots in her plan.

Keeping her irritation to herself, she turned back to the Internet, searching for more information and ideas. It wasn't long before she stumbled across urban dictionary. It seemed to be a collection of phrases and meanings, a lot like the dictionary JARVIS had given her shortly after she'd started actively trying to learn how to communicate with Tony.

This, though.

This was a whole new world.

Oddly, something about it made her remember the feelings that had tickled her when she had found the moving image of that kiss.

Bucky shifted in her grip, and she refocused her attention on him. It didn't take Tony long to calm his mate, though, so she went back to gathering information. 

When she had looked at that moving image, it had sent a tingle through her. She wasn't sure why. She had never been interested in any other species that way before. Not even her own. None of the males that had courted her had ever won her favor. But something about watching the two men kiss... it made her want. To see more. Possibly to _do_ something.

Was this something to do with whatever her captors had done to her? Something to do with that strange stinging blue liquid they had repeatedly forced her to bathe in?

Agrippina wasn't sure.

But the tingle didn't go away.

Wondering whether something like that was even possible for her to indulge, she queried the Internet again. She needed to know a lot more before she asked JARVIS this particular question.

If she could, though... Agrippina let her grip on Bucky tighten briefly as anticipation left her unable to resist the need to move. If she could indulge this want, maybe she could take advantage of that to get Tony and Bucky to stop being dumb.

First she needed to find out more about their courting and mating rituals, but then. Then the real fun would begin. She would seduce Tony, who she had seen eyeing her arms with an expression a lot like the one he got when he looked at his mate. She was fairly sure she could get him to agree, once she knew how to court him. And if she succeeded, that would either make them both realise they were being dumb or let her have a lot of fun with Tony and make her friend feel good.

_> _ JARVIS? _

_> _ Yes? _

_> _ What does Tony. Like? _

_> _ Please specify more detail. Sir likes a great many things. _

Agrippina debated how much of her plan to give away. _> _ Do not tell Tony about this, _ she requested.

_> _ Only information that directly negatively impacts another entity within the Tower will be exempt from the standard privacy settings. _

Good. _> _ What does Tony look for in his mates? _


	5. [Tony]

He couldn't put his finger on what it was, but something had changed between them that night he'd fixed up Barnes' arm. Tony was a bit baffled by it.

After Barnes had left, to all appearances quite pleased with the way his arm looked and worked now that it had been repaired and cleaned properly, Tony had taken the opportunity to work on his armour a bit. Doing the equivalent of routine maintenance by hand for once, rather than asking JARVIS to do it, it was the kind of work that could keep his hands busy and the rest of him calm. Almost meditative. He'd had a lot of thoughts to untangle, and the foremost among them had been the way Barnes had hinted that he'd deliberately wanted to get Tony alone. He'd caught the comment about pulling Cap back out of the Potomac, but carefully ignored it. Barnes had been very edgy and uneasy about letting anyone near his arm.

It had taken Barnes a while to relax but when he had… Tony had to shake his head, disbelief overwhelming his zen for a moment. 

Barnes had seemed to take it as an invitation to flirt, hard, and that was just... well, he wasn't sure what it was, but it was confusing. Sure, he knew he was a catch by any social standard you cared to name; he had money, he had looks, he had power, he had status, and all those other things that people seemed to crave. But he was a hot mess on the best of days, no matter the front he put up, and a superhero. Those were two parts of him that he couldn't turn off, and they also chased away anyone that saw past the shallow social attraction he presented.

He and Pepper had lasted about a year and a half -- which was a record -- but even she, with her seemingly limitless competence and patience, had eventually cried uncle in the face of the insanity that being Iron Man seemed to attract.

Barnes, though, didn't seem to give a flying fuck about his money or his looks. Or his social status or any of that other crap. No, he seemed to be interested only in Tony, bizarre as that was to contemplate.

Tony knew how to read people, and was fairly good at it. He just didn't often give enough fucks to do it unless he was on stage and it mattered to the company. Or, more recently, the team.

He stretched, putting his arms above his head and leaned back in his chair, arching his back. "Come on, J," he said to his AI, "we're going flying."

"Sir?"

"I need to get out for a bit. You know what to do."

"I feel I should remind you of the team dinner Captain Rogers has organized and requested you attend."

"Yeah, sure, whatever."

He couldn't help the smile that tugged at his lips when the armour closed around him for the first time since Agrippina had hijacked it. It was hard to believe that had been almost a week ago, already. And a surprisingly calm week, at that.

The sensation of the Gs as he flew, as he threw himself into what would have been an Immelmann turn if he'd been in a fighter, was settling in a way very little could match, of late.

The idea that Barnes was interested pushed its way back into the forefront of his mind pretty quickly, though. He just couldn't seem to quite wrap his head around it. And it really didn't help that he hadn't been with a man in years.

"Tell me something, JARVIS," he said after the silence had drawn out a bit.

"On what topic?"

"I know I wasn't imagining the flirting when Barnes let me open up his arm."

"Indeed not, sir."

"But why would he do that?"

JARVIS had the gall to laugh at him silently, though the emotion came through clearly in his words. "Presumably because he is attracted to you, Sir."

"Smartass."

"In my experience, Sir, this is one arena in which you do not require assistance," JARVIS snarked, and played him a clip of one of his own leaked sex tapes. 

"You are being the least helpful person right now. Mute."

Tony shoved the issue aside again as best he could and focused on giving the New Yorkers watching him a good show. Might as well. This was bound to show up on YouTube and Twitter later.

He spent another half hour just enjoying himself, then gave in and returned to the Tower to put away the armor.

The first thing that happened, the moment he stepped back out of it, was that he was greeted by an apparently amorous robot octopus. Sniggering at her, Tony ran his hands over Agrippina's updated hardware. They had implemented the changes she had suggested once Barnes' own arm had been repaired.

Tony had distantly noted that Barnes hadn't left afterward, choosing to stay and watch him work on Agrippina's chassis instead. That had taken a back seat to the work he was doing, though, and Tony had quickly forgotten he was there. (That in and of itself was nearly unprecedented. It had only ever happened with Pepper and Rhodey before.)

Tony was a bit conflicted about the whole thing. Yeah, Barnes had his memories back -- or so he claimed -- but Tony couldn't go around trusting just anyone to hang out in his workshop while he was actively designing.

That went for Agrippina, too, really, but since he had been designing for her, he had ignored that little detail. And anyway, she had been inside his armour systems before. His most well protected secret was already hers, and there was nothing he could do about it, short of killing her.

That -- he nixed the thought with a shudder -- that wasn't something he was prepared to do. Not after the effort that he and JARVIS had gone to, already. Nor did he have the first idea how he would even do it, had he had the slightest inclination to go through with such a thing. How did one kill a ghost octopus that could possess technology?

Hell, he didn't even know if that description of her was accurate.

Shaking his head to clear it, he gently disentangled himself from her arms. "What have you been up to, while I was out?"

_> _ research _

Tony raised an eyebrow at her. That reply had been quicker than previous ones where JARVIS had had to translate between speech and text for her. It was almost frightening how quickly she learned. "Researching what?" Tony thought better of that question even as he voiced it and addressed the second half of his query to his AI. "Do I even want to know, JARVIS?"

"I am... not certain you do, Sir."

_> _ tell you later _

That made his other eyebrow go up. "When later?"

_> _ feed first. _

Well then. That was fairly clear. "Oooookay. J, keep an eye on her, would you? Let me know if anything goes off the rails."

"I do not think you have much to fear, Sir," his AI replied drily, sass fully in evidence, "your virtue was fully tarnished long ago."

And what _that_ implied, Tony wasn't going to touch with a ten foot pole. Not right now.

"Whatever. Where's Cap?"

"The Captain and Sergeant Barnes are on the common floor. Agents Romanov and Barton are currently not on the premises but have indicated that they will be back for dinner. The locations of Thor and Dr. Banner remain unknown at this time."

That, at least, was about what he had expected to hear. He made his way out of the workshop and into the elevator, holding the doors for Agrippina out of already-formed habit as he did. The ingrained reflex to make it as easy as possible for his bots to learn and grow had transferred easily to Agrippina, and her response had been amazing, really.

She'd acclimated to most human conventions and habits already, and it had been a week since she'd 'arrived'.

Really, that was one of the biggest reasons he wanted to keep her around, if he was honest with himself. He wanted to see just what kind of capacity she had to learn and assimilate. And he kind of wanted to see what would happen if he made her a humanoid chassis and introduced her to Fury. That was an encounter that he suspected would be absolutely fascinating.

Lost in his thoughts as he was, Tony didn't really pay any attention to dinner. He made conversation when it was required, but the majority of his attention was still on his attempts to puzzle out what to do about Barnes and what Agrippina was planning.

When the food had disappeared -- most of it into Cap and Barnes -- Agrippina made her presence known again. She more or less climbed into Bucky's lap, and put aside the plate he'd had there with one suckered arm.

_> _ help with mission? _ she asked him, making him exchange a surprised look with Cap.

"Mission?" Barnes inquired carefully. "What mission?"

_> _ confidential _

Steve snorted. "She wants something that requires hands, I'd bet."

"But why not ask Tony?" Barnes pointed out. "He's her favourite."

_> _ Bucky too _

If a robot octopus could be said to look affronted, she did. Bucky gave her a skeptical look.

Clint rolled his eyes. "Just humour the tentacle monster. She's been harmless so far, even if she does still creep me out a lot."

Natasha nodded. "I don't see the harm in it."

Tony had the sinking feeling that he was going to regret this somehow. "This 'mission' better not end in any kind of structural damage to my Tower."

_> _ won't. _

Giving in, Tony shrugged. He'd had -- and put into practice -- a lot of terrible ideas over the years. What was one more? "No injuries, either. Beyond that, what Barnes says, goes."

Barnes gave him a startled look, as though he hadn't thought Tony would put even that much trust in him.

Clint made shooing gestures at Barnes, who stood, looking a bit dazed, and let Agrippina direct him out of the room.

Tony waited for the elevator doors to close behind them before he muttered, "Could this day get any more confusing?"

Steve laughed at him outright, not privy to the thoughts Tony'd been having about his best friend, earlier, and said, "I'd have thought this was about par for the course, given the insanity the team deals with regularly."

"Understatement," Natasha put in, and Clint nodded. 

The conversation moved on, then, and Tony tried not to think about it too much. Barnes could handle himself. He couldn't help but wonder just what Agrippina wanted, though.

Once the meal ended and the conversation broke up, Tony found himself restlessly wandering his penthouse suite. He felt like he should be doing things, but finding the focus to do it, or even figure out what it was he felt he should be working on, was somehow not happening.

Of course, the moment he admitted that to himself, his thoughts turned right back to Barnes and his flirting. They'd known each other mere hours when it had started, and that pretty strongly implied a physical attraction, it was true. He wasn't judging -- he'd been known to find a back room with ladies he'd known for shorter spans of time than that -- but Barnes seemed far more... serious about those sorts of things. 

For the sake of argument, though, maybe it was actually a thing Barnes wanted; that made it a question of what Tony wanted. Did he? Did he want to have Barnes in his bed? Tony wasn't sure it would work out, but he had to admit that Barnes was ridiculously attractive. Had been, even with his hair long and ragged -- he'd cut it back before the team had picked him up, but Tony had seen pictures of the Winter Soldier.

On a purely physical level, Tony could see it possibly working.

He just wasn't sure he wanted a casual fling.

After Pepper, he'd worked out that he liked the stability of that kind of long term relationship. Pepper was his bedrock; in the time since she'd first come into his life she'd become the solid foundation for very nearly everything he built and designed in the last decade, or maybe longer. The Intellicrops? Inspired by a throwaway one liner of Pepper's. The arc reactor powering the building? Iron Man, himself? He'd very literally rebuilt himself from the ground up not just to atone but also to get home to her.

And he was very glad she was still a big part of his life, for all that he only saw her infrequently now because of their respective obligations.

He knew that most of these were questions only Barnes could answer, and even then only if he gave the man a chance. Tony shoved open his bedroom door and flung himself down on his bed, spreadeagled. He wasn't tired in the least, but he wanted to be comfortable.

"Sir," JARVIS informed him, the moment he was settled, "Sergeant Barnes and Agrippina are requesting entry."

Speak of the devil. Seemed he couldn't escape Barnes, even when the man wasn't physically present, and somehow he managed to spend a lot of time around Tony. "Fine, let 'em in."

Might as well see where this went.

"Tony?" Barnes called out to him, sounding a little uncertain, and Tony's eyes narrowed at his ceiling for a beat. Barnes was using his first name?

Rolling to his feet, he sauntered out of his room, and toward his front door. "Something you needed?"

Agrippina all but pounced on him once he made his appearance and he caught her with a grunt. Her chassis was relatively lightweight and all, but it still had quite some mass to it and metal didn't have the same kind of give that flesh and bone did. Tony was pretty sure he would have some bruises after this.

When he took a better look at her, though, his thoughts screeched to a halt. "What the-- Why are you painted, then, hm?"

Half of her arms had been lacquered a very familiar shiny red and gold and the other half had been decorated with red stars that Tony knew had to have been inspired by Barnes' old arm, because the new one was missing the star. It had an effect a bit like a pedicure with nail art.

Barnes shrugged. "She insisted. Still dunno why she didn't ask you or JARVIS. Or Steve. He always had a steady hand for those kinds of things."

_> _ couldn't change colors, _ Agrippina commented. _> _ needed to do it manually _

That... was something Tony probably should have included in the original design for her. "Ah."

_"Stop worrying, Tony."_ Agrippina suggested, her pronunciation wavering a bit.

Barnes raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, that's new. Since when can you talk?"

_"New,"_ she replied, agreeably.

Tony thought she sounded unbearably smug about it, too. "That what you wanted to show me?"

_"No. Something else."_

"Then what is it?" Tony pursued the point, very curious now. If this had to do with that strange comment JARVIS had made earlier...

Barnes looked like he wasn't sure he wanted to know the answer to that question. "Stark, are you sure--" he started, then broke off abruptly, looking down.

Tony watched, fascinated, as Agrippina took in Barnes' reaction to the turn the conversation had taken and wrapped one of her arms firmly around his calf, the metal links spiraling up his pantleg until they reached the back of his knee and curled around the folds to catch a firm grip on the denim of his jeans. 

Tony couldn't help his amused huff. "Yeah, you're definitely her favourite," he commented. "She doesn't do that to me."

_"Can change that."_ She replied and put actions to words.

The thing was -- Tony jumped at the feeling -- she was a lot more daring where it came to him, apparently, and decided she wanted to put her arms on his bare skin. The feeling of having the metal links and soft polymer suckers wrap around his calf sent a shudder of inappropriate arousal up his spine. 

_"Better?"_

Tony had to clear his throat twice before he could answer, thoroughly distracted by the way Agrippina was using her suckers to massage his leg. "Sure. Better. But you never answered my question."

_"Tony and Bucky mates?"_

Tony wanted to groan. This again? "No, we're not. I don't know where you got that idea."

Barnes -- no, Tony decided, he was calling the man Bucky after this -- Bucky was staying carefully silent. Not wanting to encourage Agrippina, no doubt.

_"Tony my mate, then?"_

Tony choked on air and saw Bucky's eyes go wide. "You sure about that?" Tony turned his full attention to his octopode guest. "It won't produce offspring, and I'm not sure how much you'd enjoy doing that."

Bucky was eyeing him strangely. "But you might," he said, his tone making it almost a question.

_"Did research."_ Agrippina said smugly. _"Men like mating with my kind."_

It was Bucky's turn to clear his throat roughly. "Not all of us do," he managed after a slightly awkward beat.

Tony shrugged and caught Bucky's attention. "As kinks go, it is kind of a weird one," he said, making a snap decision, "but I make it a policy not to claim I don't like something I've never tried."

_"Consent?"_

Tony stared at her, wondering where she'd learned about that and suspecting JARVIS' involvement, and nodded. "Sure why not. I'll try it once. But I'm not going to promise more."

The slightly strangled sound that escaped Bucky made him look up, and Tony saw the furious debate behind Bucky's eyes. "Tony?"

"Hmm?"

The debate raged on for another brief moment. "I've gotta know. Are you even into guys?"

Well then. "Depends on the guy. I've made a few exceptions in the past. Kinda surprised you're not asking about the kinks."

"Thought I'd save that for later. If, uh, you're interested?"

So that was a thing that was happening. Tony considered how to answer the question. "The number of guys I've considered sleeping with in the last ten years is one."

"Before or including tonight?" Bucky riposted.

"Including tonight. I'm sure as hell not turning you down if you actually want to give this a try."

The moment broke when Agrippina pulled them in closer to her. Bucky warily watched him as she did. "Pretty sure your rescued stray, here, is feeling impatient."

_"Not."_

Tony bent and hefted her into his arms. Agrippina stubbornly kept her grip on Bucky, but transferred it to his left arm. The rest of her arms went around Tony, and sent a few very pleasant shivers down his spine. "We have a few things to talk about first," he told her firmly, carrying her into his living room and sprawling out on his sofa with her tucked against his stomach.

Bucky followed, looking a bit unsure of himself but pulled along by Agrippina's grip on his arm. It was as though he wanted to know more but knew he would regret hearing it. Tony could relate.

Pulling his focus back to the topic at hand, though, he peeled one metallic suckered arm away from his torso and ran his hands along its length. It made the rest of the arms wrapped around him tighten, and got him a sound eerily like a pleased sigh.

Bucky broke the silence. "What did you want to discuss, Tony?"

Agrippina prodded at him, also clearly curious, and a bit impatient.

Tony shrugged. "Well, there are a lot of questions that need answers. First, is this a one time thing?"

Bucky huffed at him. "If you want it to be."

"Do you?" Tony pushed his advantage.

"I wouldn't say no to a one-off, but it's not what I'm after." Bucky eyed Agrippina. "But what about her?"

"No idea." Tony shrugged.

There was another short silence as Agrippina considered the question.

_"you said once."_ She pointed out.

"Okay, we'll revisit that later." Tony conceded. "So, uh, next up. Kinks, limits, and safewords, if any."

Agrippina said nothing. Tony let her think.

After a beat, Bucky cleared his throat awkwardly. "None that I know of?"

"That's fair," Tony told him, smirking, "we can explore a few things and see what works for you."

Turning his attention to his octopode friend, he prompted her. "And what about you, then, hm?"

_"not sure? Liked seeing the moving pictures on the internet."_

Bucky groaned and went a bit pink. "Really? Voyeurism?"

In response one of Tony's holographic interfaces sprang open in the air between them and [a gif](https://media.giphy.com/media/5Zs730U1OtUt2/giphy.gif) started playing.

Tony watched it loop a couple of times.

"A good choice," he told her, watching Bucky struggle to maintain his composure. The man looked like he was more turned on by that gif and what it implied than Tony had expected. Or he himself had. "But that doesn't answer the question about limits."

_"Limits?"_ Agrippina paused for a beat, and Tony suspected JARVIS was putting in his two cents. _"Actions that cause pain or fear?"_

Tony nodded. "Exactly. What are they?"

She visibly considered that for a long moment. _"Too small tank."_

Bucky snorted. "Don't think there's much danger of that."

"Nah," Tony agreed. "Anything else?"

_"Don't know."_

"And you, Tony?" Bucky turned the question on him, next.

Trying not to let the memories rush up out of their box until they were roaring in his ears, Tony shrugged off the question as much as he could. "Not a big fan of pain- or impact play," he replied, keeping his tone light, "and tubs of water are a big no. Can't put much weight on my ribcage. The rest is pretty situational. Your turn, Buck."

Watching a shiver of indecision run through Bucky, Tony wondered if this had been a bad idea after all.

Rather than let Bucky work through whatever it was, though, Agrippina reached out and pulled him closer by his prosthetic arm. _"Bad memory?"_

"You could say that," Bucky rasped. Clearing his throat he went on, "just keep anything resembling HYDRA's experimentation out of the picture, and we should be fine."

Tony made a face at him. "That kind of shit is the farthest thing from sexy. Don't even go there. Ugh. Ew."

"So we've covered your first two points, what else is there?" Bucky prompted him.

"The practical shit. Either of you ever been with a guy before?" Silence answered him, and Tony huffed. "Thought not. Right. You want the run down from the Internet or a practical demonstration? Given who's involved we shouldn't have to worry about STDs or pregnancies."

"What? Now?" Bucky's voice held a hint of a squeak.

_"condoms and lube,"_ Agrippina put in, a bit smugly. _"researched."_

A cold suckered metal arm slid high up his pantleg to latch onto the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, making the fabric bunch up at his knee and pulling a surprised yelp out of Tony. 

Before she could get any bolder, Bucky was crouched next to the couch and gently peeling her away. "Let's move this to a bed first," he suggested as he hauled Tony to his feet. "There will be more space."

_"Bucky only wants Tony?"_ she asked as Bucky got them moving.

"I..." Bucky hesitated. "It's new and kind of weird? But maybe. I could be persuaded."

_"consent?"_

"Ask me again later." Bucky told her and steered Tony through his bedroom door.

Agrippina slithered down to the floor and disappeared into Tony's bathroom. He stared after her for a moment, until Bucky pinned him to the inside of his door and commanded his attention, leaning in until they were close enough to breathe the same air. Bucky held his eyes, then asked, "Yes?"

Tony grumbled a few swears under his breath, then threaded his hands into Bucky's hair and pulled him the rest of the way in. When their lips met, Tony swore the floor shifted under his feet. The touch quickly went from tentative and careful to deep and wet and messy. They mapped each other out, learning what got them the best reactions, and then it was like a competition to see who could wreck whom faster.


	6. [Bucky]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right. So. After this, there is only a short little epilogue left to post. I hope all of you have enjoyed the ride. ;)

When they finally broke apart again, Bucky stared at Tony for a long while, just taking in the fact that this was actually happening and savoring the tingle of his lips. He was still pressed tightly to Tony, whose enjoyment of the contact was pretty obvious, and that was already almost overwhelming. He'd gone so long with only the bare minimum of physical contact that going through with this might well leave him an overstimulated mess, but Bucky couldn't find it in him to care about that.

The pleasure shuddering through him and making his hips thrust up against Tony's without a conscious decision to do so was reward enough, and the promise that it would get even better was incentive not to move an inch.

It was a strangely meditative moment; Tony didn't speak, preferring to let his hands wander and leave his eyes shut.

When they eventually slitted open, Bucky found himself falling into them in an almost literal way. He didn't bother resisting the urge to kiss Tony again. This time he could feel the slight puffiness of Tony's lips, and the slight sting of his own, as they leisurely did their best to set fire to one another again. Tony's hands found their way to his hips and subtly adjusted Bucky against him, slotting them together in a new better way that sent Bucky's lust spiraling higher. He had never imagined being with a man before Tony, but this was turning out to be one of the best nights he could remember. And they hadn't even gotten past kissing.

A cold metal arm twining around his leg again startled him, breaking his focus. It turned the previously very nice kiss into a disastrous mess of teeth and a sharp jolt of pain as they got in each others' way before they could get themselves sorted out. He turned just enough to glare at Agrippina and growl a curse at her.

Tony snickered at him. "Come on. You said something about a bed. If you want, I can show you mine."

_"yes, bed. Then tell me what want."_

Bucky forced himself to let go of Tony's waist. "She's got a point," he said as Tony stepped back, looking like he would rather have stayed right where he was, "we've only talked about what we don't want."

"What I want," Tony informed him a bit archly, "is to have one or both of you inside me. But if you prefer it the other way, I can do that too."

The blunt words sent another shock of arousal up Bucky's spine, and he groaned. "Never tried either, so."

Agrippina took that as her cue to climb Tony like a tree. Her suckered arms went around his waist, latching onto the bare skin under Tony's thin t-shirt, and she hauled herself up without a second thought. 

"Okay," Tony said wincing and drawing out the word a little as his arms went around her, "that's going to leave a few hickeys."

 _"Bad?"_ she stopped moving and let go of him.

"Surprising. They'll go away in a few days." Rather than let her worry over him, Tony turned and made his way across the room to his bed. He settled himself on the edge of the mattress, sitting comfortably with his hands running over Agrippina's body and making her seem to purr like a cat. Bucky wondered belatedly just what she could feel. She sure seemed to enjoy the touches, for all that there didn't look to be any sensors in her arms for those sorts of actions.

After letting Tony do as he wished for a few seconds, though, she reiterated her question. _"what does Tony like?"_

"Lots of things," he told her, and Bucky had to bite his lip at the sight an irritated octopus robot made. Tony apparently found it comical too, but he went on without pointing it out. "Let's keep things simple for now. No complicated kinks or positions."

"What I'd consider simple," Bucky couldn't resist asking, "or what you would?"

"Touché," Tony conceded the point, smirking at him. "Pretty sure I can handle whatever you can throw at me, though."

It was the smirk that got him moving, in the end. Bucky couldn't let that smug smile stay on Tony's face. After all, he had his own reputation to maintain, here. Tony wasn't the only experienced guy in the room. This couldn't be _that_ different from seducing a dame.

Leaving Tony to deal with the octopus in his arms, Bucky slid onto the bed and ran his hands up Tony's sides, rucking up the t-shirt as he went. "You still haven't told us what you want," he reminded Tony, tucking himself close and breathing the words in Tony's ear.

The move sent a shudder through Tony, and Bucky grinned, pleased by the reaction. He kissed and nipped his way down Tony's neck, following an impish impulse to leave a hickey of his own on the delicate skin. The move made Tony squirm in his arms and whine high in his throat, his head falling back onto Bucky's good shoulder. When Bucky lifted his head, he took in the sight for a moment, and only then realised that Agrippina had been doing some exploration of her own.

She'd found a way to undo the button and fly of Tony's jeans, and deftly insinuated her arms under them. To Bucky's amusement, Tony seemed lost in the haze of sensations, willing to just let them wash over him for the time being.

Damned if the thought didn't send a shot of jealousy through him, though. He wanted to see what would happen if he tried that.

As he found out a beat later, when he wormed his right hand between the suckered metal arms caressing Tony's chest and belly, what happened was Tony arching into the touch the moment Bucky's hand inched below his waistline, wanting to be touched properly.

"Fuck, come on, I need more than that," Tony gritted out, his hands falling to the blankets on his bed and clenching around two fistfuls of the fabric.

Bucky indulged him, taking the opportunity to bring his left hand around to toy with one of Agrippina's arms, just for the hell of it. He ran it through his fingers almost absently as he took his time touching Tony with his right hand, slipping his fingers under the soft fabric of Tony's underwear and using his fingertips to very lightly caress the soft skin he found beneath. 

Tony's hands flew up to bury themselves in Bucky's hair, at that and he squirmed. "Thought I asked for more."

"You did," Bucky agreed. "But I thought you wanted to take this slow."

 _"slow is good,"_ Agrippina put in, _"but satisfying is better."_

Bucky considered that for a moment. "What do you want, then?"

Rather than answer verbally, she reached in and twined one arm around the hand he had on Tony, letting the motions of Bucky's hand drag her suckers over soft skin. Tony's breath hitched, catching in his chest, before he managed to get himself together enough to do more than just allow them to wreck him. Not that it seemed to take much, which surprised Bucky a little given the man's reputation for having sex with anything that looked at him and stood still long enough. Tony was responsive and eager, and leaking all over Bucky's hand.

Now, though, he was taking a far more active stand on the matter. His hands left Bucky's hair and trailed down to touch the tangle of metal and flesh wrapped around his dick, then settled on Bucky's ass, pulling him hard against Tony's back. The move made Bucky bite at his lip; it left his own hard cock pressed into the hollow of Tony's lower back and the crack of Tony's ass, and Tony was taking full advantage of that. He rolled his hips and let the movement rub Bucky's cock firmly.

Bucky winced a little at the mix of pleasure and pain that shot through him, then pulled back for a moment, disentangling his hands just long enough to undo his own pants and shove them down over his hips along with his underwear.

"Mmm," Tony nodded and followed suit, "good idea. There are far too many clothes still on for this to work as planned."

"You always plan out your sexual encounters?" Bucky ribbed him. He got an amused huff in response.

"No need. There's a pretty clear script," Tony told him. "Make out, remove clothes, have sex if you want it."

"And I'm guessing you do," he replied, watching as Agrippina set to exploring the newly exposed skin.

"Uh, yeah?" Tony eyed him for a moment with an expression on his face that Bucky couldn't quite parse. It didn't last. When her suckers latched onto the inside of Tony's leg again, Tony hissed and squirmed. "Boy, I'm gonna feel those in the morning."

"But you like 'em, right?" Bucky prodded at him, remembering the comment about pain play, even if he wasn't quite sure what that was.

Tony caught on quickly. "I'll let you know if anything bothers me," he said, and his grip on Bucky went almost soothing. A beat later, though, he was letting go and reaching for the waistband of his own pants.

 _"yes,"_ Agrippina chimed in, _"remove."_

At the words, Bucky realised that she had been letting them work out their own boundaries. He eyed her. That was more perceptive than he would have expected from a creature that hadn't ever been exposed to people until a week ago. HYDRA didn't count.

It worked to everyone's advantage, so in the end he said nothing about it, choosing to take the opportunity to peel Tony's t-shirt off him, leaving Tony's hair a mess.

Tony wasn't one to let that pass without a response. "Yeah, I'm not going to be the only one shirtless, here," he declared, and set to undoing the buttons of Bucky's shirt.

It took a few seconds and they got in one another's way briefly when Bucky decided he'd waited long enough and tried to pull Tony in for another kiss. Their arms got tangled in Bucky's shirt but neither of them cared.

For his part, Bucky was fighting not to let the sensation of so much skin contact send him floating away on a cloud of endorphins. It was somehow satisfying and electrifying, all at once, and he wasn't sure which of the two feelings would win out.

The metal arm wrapping around his leg and winding all the way up to his inner thigh made him jump. Tony laughed.

 _"found condoms and lube,"_ Agrippina told them, and Bucky realised he'd been so distracted he hadn't noticed her leaving for her search.

"So you did," Tony agreed easily. "Do you know how to use them, too?" 

_"researched,"_ she reminded him, sounding a little offended. 

Bucky wasn't sure what to think, now that he had to either let go of Tony so that Agrippina could follow through on her promise to drive him wild, or join in and let her touch him, as well.

He hesitated.

Tony didn't. Tony gently pulled away from him and let himself fall back onto his bed, sprawled out comfortably, and looking like sin personified. Or maybe hedonism. The olive tones of his skin almost seemed to glow in the low light and drew all of Bucky's attention to his hard cock.

He stared at the tableau shamelessly. "You puttin' on a show for me?"

Agrippina pulled herself up onto the bed, holding the supplies she'd gathered, and Bucky had to swallow hard around the sudden tightness in his throat. _"pretty,"_ she commented.

He had definitely not been prepared for the way he was affected by the sight of Tony wreathed in metal. Sure, he knew the man wore metal armour for his superheroing. But this was different. There was a very different intent behind it.

A thought occurred to him, then, and Bucky bit his lip. He forced himself to set aside the question of whether Tony had ever had sex in his armour. He was pretty sure the answer was no, but he would ask later.

For now... Bucky settled on the edge of the mattress and watched Tony do his best not to squirm. He was only halfway succeeding. Bucky watched his hips twitch up into the careful touches. Each of Agrippina's arms was a meter and a half long, large enough at the base that Bucky's fingertips would just about touch if he tried to wrap his hand around it, and narrowed to a tip about the diameter of the end of his little finger.

While he'd sat there cataloguing the sight, she'd produced the condom she'd promised from somewhere and started trying to open the foil packet. After a couple of attempts that made Bucky grin, she shoved it into his hands.

_"open?"_

Without saying a word, he did as she asked, anticipation starting to rush through him again. The urgency Bucky had been feeling when he'd pinned Tony to his bedroom door had subsided slightly, but it was definitely still in evidence, glowing embers just waiting to flare back into flame.

Tony watched her intently as she slid the condom over one arm and produced a bottle of lube in another. "Well," he quipped, challenge in his eyes, "not going to keep me waiting, are you?"

Rather than answer verbally, she poured some lube out onto her arm and started working it into him.

"Oh fuck," was all Tony managed to grit out and then his eyes fell shut and words seemed to desert him entirely.

If Bucky had thought Tony was squirming before, that was nothing compared to now. Tony jumped as though he'd been goosed when the chilly metal slipped inside him, and as she opened him up Bucky wondered if they would need to hold him down for this so Tony wouldn't roll them off the mattress without meaning to.

It wasn't long before Tony was wordlessly begging for more, and Bucky took a moment to enjoy just how loud and uninhibited Tony apparently was in bed. Bucky couldn't resist; he gave in to the urge to touch himself, admitting to himself that there might be something to the idea of watching after all, as he did. Wondering just what it would be like to feel metal around him, seeing the sheer enjoyment Tony seemed to take in the feeling, he switched hands after a few tugs.

The chill lent a distinct edge to the act, and Bucky flinched a little. But he suddenly wanted to come, so he kept at it, letting the metal warm the longer it was in contact with his skin and feeling the tingle build at the base of his spine. 

"Fuck, yes, there!" Tony said on a moan, his hips thrusting up into empty air as he searched for friction he probably knew he wouldn't get.

A few seconds later Tony was coming with a shout, tensing hard and shuddering. 

Caught off guard by the sight and the strong jolt of lust it sent through him, Bucky choked on his next breath and came too, with an embarrassing keening whine.

Tony was watching him when Bucky managed to refocus his attention on more than the aftershocks running through him. "Was it good for you, too?"

"Are you kidding me right now?" Bucky gave him an arch look and glanced around for something to clean himself up with. "The better question is, are you up for more?"

He came up with nothing, and debated getting up so he could find Tony's no doubt extravagant bathroom.

"I'm gonna need a few minutes." Tony answered, pulling his attention back to the conversation.

_"feels nice?"_

"Mmm, yeah," Tony agreed, stretching languidly, "definitely feels nice. Did you like it, too?"

_"yes."_

"Good. Cause I'm really not sure what we'd do otherwise." Bucky put in.

_"told you. Researched."_

"True, you did." Tony carefully disentangled himself from her hold. "Clean up now and have some fun in the shower?"

Bucky eyed him for a moment. "I know you waterproofed me, but is she?"

"I wouldn't suggest it if she weren't," Tony retorted, and Bucky felt like a heel.

 _"shower takes too long,"_ Agrippina said, her tone verging on a grumble, and Tony changed direction on a dime. 

"Then we can clean up and skip the fun," he said. "Beds are more versatile anyway."

Bucky stood and offered Tony a hand up. It was accepted and Tony's hand went around his forearm. Agrippina promptly wrapped an arm around both of theirs, tying them together in what Bucky was sure was intended to be far more than a literal sense.

Rather than draw attention to it, and interrupt the fun for what promised to be a very awkward and possibly difficult conversation, he hauled Tony to his feet, watching as Tony's free hand automatically went around his new octopode lover.

And that had to be one of the weirdest thoughts he'd ever let cross his mind.

"Come on," Tony broke into his contemplation of just how crazy his life was, turning and tugging at Bucky's arm in a clear attempt to get him moving, "this way."

Agrippina only released them once they were physically inside the bathroom and needed their hands free to wash themselves, then waited impatiently for them to finish the task. Her own cleanup, which consisted of disposing of the used condom, had taken almost no time at all, and left her plenty of opportunity to wrap herself around Tony again.

Whatever she might say about it, Bucky knew Tony was her favourite.

Long before he was properly ready again, Tony was plastering himself against Bucky's chest, leaving no doubts about what he wanted. The move sent a first twitch of interest through him, and Bucky knew Tony had noticed it by the way he smirked. The expression had a very promising edge to it.

"Up for another round already?" He asked, a very intrigued look in his eyes.

His short recovery time had taken him off guard the first night he'd given in to the need to get some relief. He'd come in his hand several times before he could convince his body it was time to sleep. After that, he'd known what to expect.

Bucky eyed Tony, who had sounded gleeful as a kid at Christmas, a little unsure what to say. "Are you? I thought you said you needed a few minutes."

"I said that and I meant it, yeah. I have so many questions, though. How many times can you go? Did the serum do that to you? Did it make you more sensitive?"

Bucky put a hand on Tony's jaw and the flow of words stopped just long enough for him to stare into Bucky's eyes as though he wanted to do that forever.

"Tony," he said slowly, "let's talk about that later."

"Later, okay, I can do later."

Putting his hands on Tony's waist, and wishing he could feel things properly with his left hand, he started walking Tony back out of the bathroom. Tony grabbed for a hand towel and some more condoms as they went.

The moment they were back on the now very mussed bed, Agrippina made her move. She wrapped her arms around both of them, but her focus was on Bucky, this time.

 _"consent?"_ she asked him again, and Bucky had to take a breath.

"Let me show him what it's like first," Tony suggested, and Bucky fell a little more in love.

There was a brief pause while she thought it over, but Agrippina agreed. _"virgin,"_ she agreed, and Bucky wasn't sure whether to laugh or die of embarrassment.

"Not hardly," he grumbled.

Tony's hands trailed up his sides, then down again, leaving behind a line of goosebumps. "Maybe not," he conceded, "but, and I say this as someone who has been on both sides of the equation, this is different."

"Different how?"

"I'll show you, if you let me."

A little wary, but definitely curious about just what had felt so good about it, Bucky watched him for a moment before he nodded. His skin felt like it was tingling, where Tony's hands rested, and he knew that was probably because he wasn't used to this level of touch, but he really didn't care about that at the moment. He hadn't realised just how badly he craved the contact, and he wasn't about to ask for it to stop.

Tony waited a beat longer, then raised an eyebrow at him, questioning.

"Alright," Bucky agreed, and chuckled when Tony pounced on him, sending them rolling across the bed until Tony's weight was pinning his hips to the mattress.

He never _quite_ forgot how strong Tony really was, but not many people also had the control and precision, to tumble Bucky anywhere. The fact that it was simple play didn't hurt either. He knew, even deep in his subconscious, that the movement and contact wasn't a threat. Could let himself just roll with it and enjoy having all of Tony's attention.

When Tony pushed himself up on his elbows, hovering over him, Bucky caught his eyes. "Well? Something tells me that there's more to it than that."

Tony snickered. "A little." He reached out with one hand and groped around for the bottle of lubricant without looking away from Bucky. "But you've already seen the mechanics of it. The thing is that, the first time, it feels strange. Especially if someone inexperienced is doing it."

"And you're that experienced?" Bucky held his eyes.

"Thanks," Tony said, apropos of nothing, and Bucky glanced over in time to see Agrippina hand Tony the bottle he'd been looking for. "Not as experienced as you think," he answered the original question, "but moreso than the others present in the room."

A short silence held between them.

"Come on, Buck," Tony smirked at him, "let me show you a good time."

"You gonna keep me waitin'?"

"Maybe I should," Tony teased him, flicking the lube bottle open with deft fingers. "You ready for this?"

"As I'm gonna be."

Tony huffed at him, and settled himself more comfortably. It left him pressed up against Bucky's hips in a very pleasant kind of way, and Bucky arched up into the contact with a pleased hum. The position very naturally left Tony cradled between his legs.

After a long moment, where they both just reveled in the feelings of being pressed up together, Tony shifted his weight to settle farther down the bed. He threw Bucky's leg over his shoulder and poured some lube onto his hand and caught Bucky's eyes again. "Tell me if it hurts at all. It shouldn't."

The feeling of Tony's lubed fingers pressing against him made him startle and tense, for all that he was expecting it. It was new and different and unexpected. The slipperiness and moisture just felt strange, and, sure, a large part of the reason for that was the newness of it all, but the knowledge that it was Tony was also setting him a little on edge.

For better or worse, even though he knew that Tony was aware that this was the first time Bucky had ever done anything like this, he felt the pressure to do it well and enjoy it.

"Relax," Tony muttered at him, "it's just me."

"Not helping."

A very bemused expression crossed Tony's face. "I suppose I'll have to distract you, then."

Without bothering to give Bucky any more warning than that, Tony ducked his head and licked his cock from root to tip. The sensation made Bucky's hips jerk, and he whined, clenching his hands in the blankets to keep from injuring Tony if he forgot his strength.

"Tony," he managed to get out before his breath caught in his throat as Tony took him into his mouth properly, "Tony, fuck."

Tony chuckled at him, and that only sent Bucky spiraling higher.

In the welter of sensation, he barely noticed it when Tony finally slipped a first finger into him.

He definitely noticed it when Tony added a second, though, despite the (very effective) distraction. The feeling of the slight sting got Bucky's attention, and he tensed up again, making Tony pull off long enough to give him a somewhat put out look.

"Thought I told you to relax," he grumbled, letting his fingers go limp and just rest where they were.

"You did," Bucky admitted, only then realizing that his breathing was a lot faster and shallower than it had been.

Tony nipped lightly at the skin high on the inside of Bucky's thigh, making him squirm. The feeling somehow made the want spiral higher, for all that Bucky wasn't sure how that was possible.

When Tony took his cock back in his mouth, Bucky couldn't help the way his hips thrust up without his input. Tony rode out the movement with a smirk in his eyes and an ease in his movements that implied he'd expected that to happen.

That time, when the stretch started up again, the slight sting was something he ignored as best he could, choosing to focus on Tony's talented mouth and tongue instead. The man definitely knew what he was doing, for all his protests that he hadn't done this in years.

He kept driving Bucky right to the edge of coming and then backing off, able to read him effortlessly somehow, and through it all, he kept slowly working Bucky's body open, careful and gradual, and now it felt good.

"Tony," Bucky heard the hoarseness in his own voice, "more."

The two fingers became three, and drove deeper, the feeling taking on a slightly harsher edge because of the new stretch. They moved like Tony was searching for something and then suddenly Bucky knew exactly why Tony had enjoyed this so much.

He hit his peak with a convulsive twitch that drove him deeper into Tony's mouth and groaned loudly.

When he could make his eyes focus properly again, his breathing still a bit too fast, he felt a shot of animalistic possessiveness shoot through him, like lightning cutting its jagged path across a night sky, at the sight of Tony smirking at him despite the come smearing his skin and caught in his facial hair.

"Good, huh?"

The rest of the night passed in a blur of sensation. The time Tony made him stand in the bathroom doorframe and hold onto its edges while he and Agrippina did their best to ruin him stood out as one of the better rounds, but he'd been mostly wrung dry by then, so it had been one of the last.


	7. [Tony]

In the two weeks since their first night in bed, they had yet to repeat the experience.

Tony wasn't sure whether that was because Bucky was just not sure how to ask for sex, or because he was too unsure of his welcome.

Mulling over the question was getting him nowhere, though, so Tony resolved to ask the man about it later tonight. Direct blunt questions generally got him a much clearer response than just trying to work things out for himself.

Stepping out of the elevator and into the foyer outside his workshop, Tony had to stop short, though. Bucky had been waiting for him there, and now took the opportunity to grab him and pin him against the glass wall of the 'shop without any real hesitation. "Thought you'd never show up," he muttered against Tony's skin, sending shivers through him.

"Did you need something?"

"You've been staying away." Bucky told him and Tony had to pull back and give him a disbelieving look. 

"I thought you were."

Bucky laughed helplessly and let his head fall to Tony's shoulder. "We're idiots."

"Come on," Tony told him and pushed at Bucky's hips to get him moving, "let's go upstairs."

They ended up in the elevator, leaning against one another from shoulders to hips, just for the feeling of touching. The silence normally would have grated on Tony, but oddly this time it didn't. Something about having Bucky there and leaning against him was enough to keep things from getting awkward.

When the elevator doors opened, Clint's incoherent stuttering was the first thing that Tony heard.

"-- but, HOW? How is this possible?"

There was a pause that implied someone -- possibly Natasha -- had given him a long look.

"Seriously, though!" Clint went on as Tony rounded the corner separating the communal living room from the hall containing the elevator. "It's a goddamn ghost octopus."

"How is what possible?" Tony asked as he took in the living room. It all looked normal. Clint, Steve, and Natasha were standing around the coffee table holding mugs and the room smelled like food.

"Your octopus friend somehow found a way to lay eggs!" Clint all but screeched at him. "Lots of them!"

Tony stared at Clint for a moment, trying to parse a statement that made no sense. "Sorry, what?"

Bucky made a strange choked noise. "... Where are they?"

Clint groaned and stumbled into the kitchen rather than answering.

Steve shrugged. "He didn't tell us," he answered. "Apparently the idea of hundreds of potential ghost octopi roaming the tower was too much?"

Natasha turned to Tony and added. "The bigger question here is: who's the father?"


End file.
